“Normal” Eating

22042010

So much of treatment revolves around the development of “normal” eating patterns. Well, what is normal?

It’s typically defined as “eating when you’re hungry, stopping when you’re full, eating more than usual sometimes and trusting your body to handle it, and missing a meal and automatically compensating a safe amount.”

Oy vey. I’ve gotten so used to ignoring hunger completely, to allowing that feeling to carry me along to a heady high that I so often don’t notice it, or I mistake it for nausea. I’ve gotten better. I can recognize hunger 9 times out of 10 now. . . . . . . but I still have a habit of ignoring it completely if I’ve met my calorie count for the day.

Stopping when I’m full. Well, I’m bulimic. . . . . . . . full has no meaning for me. My entire life, no matter how much or how long I’ve restricted, I’ve been able to just randomly eat 15-20 pounds of food at once. My body doesn’t recognize “full” until I’m in pain and can barely move. Now, I’m so PSYCHED that hasn’t happened in well over a month. . . . . . Cannot even BEGIN to describe the giddy amazingness when I can go, “I haven’t binged!” Win. My point. Victory. All of those positive words that I most often respond, “But I haven’t done anything” to.

Overeating/indulging. Oh, I’m just fine to indulge. . . . . . . as long as it very neatly fits into my meal plan, and isn’t full of stupid carbohydrates. Which. . . . . . . . isn’t really indulging. Carbs scare me, for two reasons. First, the numbers are SO BIG. A food that I used to eat all the time has “Fat, .5, Protein, 4, Carbs 54”. Oy vey. That is a random, MASSIVE number. A number that is FAR too big for me to stomach. Second, I have no self-control. . . . . . at least, I didn’t. My body doesn’t trust me or like me. My first impulsive is to finish ANYTHING that’s in front of me, and lick the plate, too. My body doesn’t believe that I’m going to feed it again, or allow it to eat. I think that’s where much of my binging came from. . . . . . . from the intense and constant restriction. I was always scared to eat, because if I ate, I’d eat EVERYTHING.

Well, of course I would. . . . . . . . my body had broke through my self-control and was going to take EVERY advantage of this opportunity, which totally wigged me out and sent me into a purging frenzy, which in turn led back into the eating everything cycle because of the insulin dump. . . . . . . . . and just. . . . . . . yuck. *shakes head* I don’t miss that, at all.

Miss meals, or undereat. When I miss meals, I want nothing to do with the next one. I keep such a close eye on the numbers involved with my food that when I undereat, I automatically go to shortchange myself that, and just a little bit more. . . . . . . . If i’m not extremely careful to eat what I need, and measure and weigh it out, I end up roughly halfing everything. Left to my own devices, I would NEVER meet my calorie count. This one is just not for me. . . . . . . . . well, part of me wants it to be. . . . . . . but it’s not.

When I look over that list, I realize the ground that I have left to cover. . . . . . . . but that doesn’t invalidate the ground that I have covered. I have made progress, and there’s no need to look that far forward. Right now, I just need to concentrate on not purging, eating enough, and staying real with my meal plans.